I was honored to be asked to speak at Mix-IT 2014. The conference is very well run, with 500 attendees, 50 speakers, 2 languages, a mix of technical and non-technical topics, and a format accommodating both talks and workshops. Best of all, it’s very inexpensive @ $50 Euros so there is no reason working folks with stingy bosses cannot attend.

I submitted a couple ideas and they chose my newest talk, Consulting Secrets. As I described it verbally during the run-up to the talk, it’s about hacking yourself and your conversation so you can be more effective. I have only presented this a few times and I was challenged by the shorter time-frame and the potential language barriers. In the end, I was delighted with the turn-out and the response to my talk. It went better than I ever anticipated!

For those who are looking for the slides, or Ángel Medinilla‘s outstanding visual summary, look no further.

From the conference material:

Sometimes it’s not just about code. It’s about understanding, sharing, communication, and leverage.

Unfortunately, the skills to work well with others–from stakeholders, to users, to team mates–isn’t taught in school. It’s not taught most anyplace.

This interactive talk will give participants the chance to practice stances and communication techniques that will immediately impact their effectiveness.

Take advantage of this opportunity to learn how consultants use the skills of business analysts and scrum masters to influence the opinions and actions of people around them. Come and learn practical “soft skill” tips for making an impact on your project, team members, stakeholders, and executives.

Ideas for now:
* How your body language influences you and others.
* How to use language so others will listen and care your message.

TL;DR: Retrospectives can lead your team to becoming a powerhouse. One method of ensuring you making real improvements is Test Driven Retrospectives, where you define the desired state during the retrospective. By writing provable statements ahead of working on the task, you ensure everyone has the same understanding and knows what successful change looks like.

As far as I’m concerned there are three skills a BA must learn to be great.

How to ask questions

How to explain concepts graphically

How to tell stories

Everything else, and there is a lot to the everything else, takes second place to these three things. The first item is vital because it’s how you learn. The second two are vital because it’s how you should share what you have learned.

We deal in complex ideas. They are not simple. I regularly quote from Rich Hickey’s presentation to StrangeLoop 2011, Simple Made Easy. Rich discusses how difficult it is for us to really grasp multiple, interrelated concepts at the same time. As Business Analysts, this is exactly our job; to communicate multiple, difficult, interrelated concepts (MDIC).

And communicating MDIC needs more than just another document. It’s not that we don’t write a lot of documents, we do. (Yes, story cards are a document.) More important than the document is the understanding. And understanding MDIC doesn’t come best or easiest via the written word. If you want to build understanding, then you need to communicate based on how your audience will best understand. Being human, the best ways to get through to your audience is by pictures and stories.

With pictures (graphics) I see and understand relationships, order, hierarchy, proportion, and all kinds of other things. If the picture is good, I can do this is less than 10% of the time it would take me to read words describing the same thing. If it’s really good, I can do this in less than 5% of the time.

Now, it sometimes takes me 10-20 times longer to develop the right picture, so there are tradeoffs depending on the role and size of your audience, but never underestimate the importance of a good image. If you work with MDIC, you probably need a picture, or twenty.

If you are ready to improve your skills in this area, I suggest looking at the following resources: